Trump threatened on Saturday to attack Iranian energy facilities if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic by 1:44 a.m. CET on Tuesday. The Iranian military threatened a long-term blockade of the strait, through which around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas transport passes, in the event of US attacks on power plants in Iran.
On Monday, Trump wrote in his online service Truth Social that he had instructed the US War Department to suspend all “military attacks against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a period of five days, provided the ongoing talks are successful.” The negotiations began at the weekend and should continue this week.
The Iranians “wanted to make a deal, and we are very willing to do it,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump made it a condition that Iran give up its nuclear program and its enriched uranium. The USA would then get the uranium. He did not explain how this could happen. However, if the talks fail to produce any results, the US would “simply continue to bomb as much as we can.”
Trump also said the US was negotiating with a “top person” in Iran. However, this is not the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Moschtaba Khamenei. The talks were being held with a man “who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” said the US President, without naming names. There will be a “very serious form of regime change,” he added.
The markets reacted immediately: the price of oil fell by more than ten percent around midday on Monday after Trump’s online post. The European stock markets reacted with massive price gains. The German stock index made up for its losses since the start of trading and was now up more than one percent. New York’s Wall Street also opened with gains.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) welcomed Trump’s rethinking. Merz said in Berlin that he spoke to the US President on the phone on Sunday and presented him with German “concerns regarding the announced attacks on the power plants in Iran.” The EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas spoke of a “very positive development”. Any attacks on the infrastructure would cause “chaos in the region” and “escalate the war even further,” she said on the sidelines of a visit to Nigeria.
According to Iranian media, Iran is not negotiating with the USA at all. “There are no talks between Tehran and Washington,” the Mehr news agency reported, citing the Foreign Ministry in Tehran. Trump’s comments were part of an attempt to “lower energy prices.” Other Iranian media also reported similar things.
The Strait of Hormuz has been controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard since the start of the Iran War on February 28th. Shipping traffic through the strategically important strait therefore came to a virtual standstill. The blockade and Iranian attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Gulf region caused oil and gas prices to skyrocket worldwide.
The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, warned of what could be the worst energy crisis in decades. The current crisis is “two oil crises and a gas collapse in one,” said Birol in Sydney, Australia, alluding to the oil crises of the 1970s and the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The head of the state oil company of the United Arab Emirates (Adnoc), Ahmed Al-Jaber, called the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz “economic terrorism”. He made the comments at the CeraWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas, where Federal Economics Minister Katherina Reiche (CDU) is also expected.
